“Understanding the quality of our water resources gives us the necessary underpinning for all our protective programs. It tells us what’s happening to water quality, what’s going wrong, and it helps us pinpoint the causes so we can do something about it. I cannot overestimate the importance of water monitoring,” said Horinko.

“We’ve made terrific progress in reducing pollution in rivers, lakes, wetlands, estuaries and coasts, yet we still lack all the facts to paint a comprehensive water quality picture. If we have watershed-wide monitoring data, we can determine how best to allocate our necessarily limited resources for cleanup, pollution prevention and ecosystem restoration. The more we know about water pollution, the more we can protect our valued water resources,” said G. Tracy Mehan, III, EPA Assistant Administrator for Water, in southern Louisiana, where he also was commemorating World Water Monitoring Day by doing water sampling activities at the Caernarvon Freshwater Diversion Project.

Historically, monitoring emphasis has been based on end-of-the-pipe monitoring to determine compliance with discharge permits. EPA is encouraging the use of new tools such as statistically-based surveys and remote sensing, improving data management, and building strong partnerships with groups and agencies that monitor water quality and use the data. October 18 is also the 31st anniversary of the signing of the Clean Water Act, and today’s significance is the culmination of activities celebrating Monitoring Month in the Year of Clean Water.

For more information about World Water Monitoring Day, go to: www.epa.gov/newsroom/hi-water_mon.htm or www.worldwatermonitoringday.org For more information, go to EPA’s monitoring Web site at: http://www.epa.gov/owow/monitoring.